


(like a long scream) always echoing

by taywen



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, brief mention of the other people marked by the Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 16:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5341370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Outsider considers those he chooses to mark. They catch his attention for different reasons, but the reason he finds them interesting does not change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(like a long scream) always echoing

**Author's Note:**

> title from Florence + the Machine's "Queen of Peace". yeah, idk either. take this weird thing?

After everything, Corvo asks, “How can someone so interested in the choices of others not give those people the choice of whether to receive the mark or not?”

Were he any of the other mortals the Outsider had marked before, the deity would have dismissed the words. Only a handful of those mortals would have thought to ask the question, and none with the same intent as Corvo. The Royal Protector is curious; he has no ulterior motive for wanting to know.

He will not be upset if the Outsider does not answer.

The Outsider- does not know how to answer. The contradiction has never occurred to him before. He knows that, especially in the current age, many of those he marks do not want the persecution from the Abbey of the Everyman that looms over them. He knows that more than a few of them come to regret his patronage if they survive long enough; that those who do not regret it often end up twisted, half-mad ruins that live on the fringes of society.

Should they get a choice? (Did _he_ -?)

None but Corvo could have asked the question. No one but Corvo has ever been given the opportunity to speak with the Outsider in this manner. When the Outsider draws a mortal’s spirit into the the Void, or manifests himself on their plane of reality, he can read their thoughts and intentions with ease; allowing them to communicate with him in another fashion is unnecessary.

Some part of the Outsider revels in the reversal. Far too often, the Outsider is the passive observer, unable to effect change upon the world except in the most indirect way. Even then, those he marks have the freedom to decide what mark _they_ leave on the world, beyond the Outsider’s influence.

The Outsider remembers, vividly, the exact moment when the mortals he chooses to mark first came to his attention.

It was at a party, the customs incomprehensible to the Outsider, yet familiar and indistinguishable in the way that all such affairs were, had been, and would continue to be, throughout the ages. The scandal and intrigue could entertain him, for a time; mere moments, but it was some relief from constant tedium all the same.

Something did set this one apart, though; some _one_ , to be more accurate. A young woman, already bored with her life and barely an adult. Many sought her favour, though few would ever receive it.

Vera considered them all, and found them wanting. Then, she made a different choice-

It was a boy with sharp eyes and quick hands, scrapping with others in the dirt of a school yard. He won, usually; that did not interest the Outsider. Then, there were men who relied on wits and blades to earn their living, and they did not interest the Outsider either.

And yet, something drew his attention that day, when they took Daud from the only life he had ever known-

It was Sokolov’s greatest work, the Outsider was certain, though the tiresome man would never realize it.

He put a brush in her hand and a canvas before her eyes; if he did more, the Outsider did not care to observe it, for her reaction was infinitely more intriguing.

The colours were captivating, endless possibilities limited only by Delilah’s own choices-

It was the same dark, dirty alley that could be found the world over. The Outsider had visited, in various ways, more of those than he could count; had witnessed violence and despair meted out in them with disinterest throughout the ages.

The boy crouched in the corner, his ragged clothing hanging from his haggard body as he tried not to make a sound. He did not want to draw attention to himself, though he could hear them talking and laughing nearby, just around the corner.

The other children vacillated between apathy and disgust, tormenting him relentlessly when they deigned to notice him at all-

The man was a protector, though he had failed in his duty. People fail constantly; they were inherently fallible, yet this one could not move past his failure, worrying at it as a dog gnawed a bone. As if there could have been any other outcome, faced with an assassin of Daud’s calibre.

He stuck just as doggedly to the truth, refusing to confess to a murder he had not committed no matter how they pressed him. There was little purpose left for him, but he clung to those vestiges all the same, trying to convince Vera’s apprentice of his innocence, trying to entreat the traitorous spymaster to look for the true culprit.

They would not listen to what he had to say, and so Corvo said nothing at all-

“You have the choice to use my mark or not,” the Outsider says, recalling himself to the present moment, to Corvo watching him patiently on a cobblestone street that leads to nowhere in the midst of the Void.

“That’s hardly the same thing,” Corvo tells him, though the Outsider had already known that. He lets it go and changes the subject; all too soon, he is gone, waking for the day.

* * *

Corvo's words remain with the Outsider, though. He worries at them like the sea wears down the stone. The Outsider is _other_ ; he is not mortal, he is not governed by the so-called fundamental laws laid down by the natural philosophers in their universities, and he need not answer to anyone.

Why, then, can he not dismiss Corvo’s question? Some of those he has appeared to have cursed and railed against him and he felt- a fleeting amusement, perhaps, or brief annoyance; nothing more. Certainly, he had never experienced this persistent disquiet before.

Some of those he marked (and many others that he had ignored) had begged him for it; but those, like Corvo, who had not truly believed in the Outsider’s existence, were not given a choice. The idea did not even occur to him. That it would be unwelcome to some, that the Outsider knew; but once he decided to pull them into the Void, there was no question that the mortal would leave with his mark.

It brings to mind things that the Outsider had considered long-forgotten, though he can see everything and forgets nothing. Rather, it reminds him of things that he wishes he would forget, and when he realizes this, he pushes Corvo’s question and those repressed memories from his thoughts.

This is what the Outsider remembers of his existence _before_ , a series of disjointed facts that paint an incomplete (but nonetheless telling) portrait of the lonely boy he once was:

The other children vacillated between apathy and disgust, tormenting him relentlessly when they deigned to notice him at all. The adults ignored him entirely, too wrapped up in their own concerns to notice the misfit orphan that wandered the streets. They would not listen to what he had to say, and so he said nothing at all.

Until they did notice him. They took him from the only life he had ever known. They fed him rich foods, and dressed him in sumptuous robes, and adorned his fingers with glittering rings.

Those privileged people tried to force him into a mould of their own design, to manipulate him for their own ends. They spoke openly of the Void, and of a new deity, and how that would benefit them, as if he could not understand their words. They did not ask him what he wanted, not once.

They drowned him, the expensive fabrics and elaborate jewellery weighing him down down down into the depths of the sea.

He drowned, but he did not die.

The Void swallowed him. It absorbed his tiny mortal spirit, or perhaps he consumed part of that vast expanse for himself.

He gazed at nothing, at something only his black eyes could see. The colours were captivating, endless possibilities limited only by his own choices.

He knew what they had wanted from him. Each of them wanted something different, though it was all more of the same in the end. He considered them all, and found them wanting. Then, he made a different choice.

The sea darkened and churned, waves frothing at the edges of the island that had once been the extent of his world. Clouds gathered, rumbling with the promise of lightning, winds whipping through the streets he had once haunted.

The island was swallowed by the sea, leaving behind no trace of its existence above the stormy waters. As that land and its people disappeared, so too did the boy who had once lived among them.

All that remains is the Outsider, and the Void, to recall their passing. And like the sea wears down stone, even that remembrance fades. None would mourn its loss, until a bodyguard poses an honest question- and even that notice would be brief. Fleeting. Much like the boy himself.

**Author's Note:**

> +bonus
> 
> He will choose Emily Kaldwin because privileged men try to force her into a mould of their design, to manipulate her for their own ends. He will not force the mark upon her either; she will crave it, for she has seen what a mark can do: kill empresses, and crown them. 
> 
> All the same, he will ask; and Emily Kaldwin will say, “Yes.”


End file.
